“Without sockets, there’s not much in the line of work you can do!” p. 125

As far as we have read, the association of technology with separate identity, a personality of its own, creates the idea of “other,” followed by opposition, while blank, vacant technology is incorporated largely without challenge.

In Nova, technology without identity has become a part of the human worker, with sockets connected to the Mouse’s flesh as deeply and permanently as the plugs in Neo or the blades in Molly. However, a personalitied technology exists in Prince Red, who must compensate for his lacking with a humanoid mechanic arm. Not completely human with a robotic arm, and yet not whole without it, Prince comes too close to “other” to be comfortable around other humans (acknowledgement of his otherness leads to inevitable death). And yet, besides an anxiety over his inhumanity, what does the presence of a cyborg limb do to Prince?

In the interview between Mark Dery and Professor Tricia Rose, they discuss a common tendency for cyborgs to code as “impregnable masculinity” while flesh remains feminine. For Ruby and Prince, this coding of machine and flesh holds true. Prince’s efforts for explicit dominance are extremely masculine, often relying on shows of physical force. This male intimidation relies on his robotic arm, to attack Lorq at the Parisian party or to threaten him with lumps of quartz on Gold. Meanwhile Ruby, Lorq’s female love interest, is devoid of mechanical adaptations, just a fleshy beauty. Masculine machinery would be out of place on the vulnerable female. Prince’s robotic limb serves to exaggerate his gender role as male.

However, the Reds, who ally themselves to Earth, are out-dated, and lose the race to control the future. Lorq, a product of a new system, a new culture and new ideals, wins.

In Lorq, and his crew, there is a combination of technology, without personality or gender roles, which works to place them clearly in the future. The sockets are not threatening or polarizing; the technology does not challenge humanity with a new other identity to incorporate. Through eliminating technology as a new group and accommodating it into existing ones, Lorq and his crew avoid the restrictive gender and social roles of technology, giving them the ability to work freely in the future.

The Third Worlds

“If you mean: Do I feel that, deep within my work, I’ve situated material that encourages the reader’s engagement with some of the political questions that the disenfranchised people in this country, victimized by oppression and an oppressive discourse based on the evil and valorized notion of nationhood and its hideous white-no other color-underbelly, imperialism, must face but cannot overcome without internalizing some of the power concepts and relationships inescapably entailed in the notion of “nation itself? Well if that’s what you mean, my answer is: Damned right I have!” -Samuel R. Delany(Black to the Future)

“If you mean: Do I feel that, deep within my work, I’ve situated material that encourages the reader’s engagement with some of the political questions that the disenfranchised people in this country, victimized by oppression and an oppressive discourse based on the evil and valorized notion of nationhood and its hideous white-no other color-underbelly, imperialism, must face but cannot overcome without internalizing some of the power concepts and relationships inescapably entailed in the notion of “nation itself? Well if that’s what you mean, my answer is: Damned right I have!” -Samuel R. Delany(Black to the Future)

In Samuel R. Delany’s Nova, the central antagonistic relationship between Prince Red and Lorq Von Ray contains a buried yet powerful criticism on nationalism. The space opera has strong resemblance to the Cold War and the Vietnam War, both which were occurring during writing. The Pleiades Federation, Draco, and the outer colonies could be alternatively called the First World, Second World, and Third World of the Cold War. These interstellar empires are divided between two powerful, white families. There are the Reds (the allusion to the Soviets is clear) of Draco and the Von Rays of the Pleiades (the independent colonies a.k.a. America). Both vie to dominate the entire known galaxy. In this, both attempt to annihilate the other using the Outer Colonies as a battle ground.

The personal feud between the two families is masked in nationalistic ideals. Each family claims that in order to protect the citizen’s of their respective empire, another empire must fall. “If the Pleiades Federation crashes when you crash, it is only so that Draco live[s]” (Nova 207). The future patriarchs (of course the families are male dominated) play with worlds as if it was a game with little regard for the billions lives that hang in the balance. “Still, perhaps it is a game... Worlds are tottering about us now, and still I only want to play” (Nova 171). Nationalism is used as an excuse for destruction. The powerful play with the lives of others as pawns on a chessboard. Prince Red and Lorq Von Ray are so consumed with personal rivalries that attempts to bridge peace between the two inevitably fail. Nationalism is used as an excuse for the conflict. Although the humanized Von Rays win in the end, there is no feeling of success, only that of transition. The sense of moral victory is nonexistent since the fact remains that working together all could have succeeded.

From the onset, the Outer Colonies are placed in a losing situation. Although holding the raw Illyrion that drives the galaxy, the Outer Colonies are too poor and powerless to benefit from the material wealth. Furthermore, both the Reds and the Von Rays exploit this Third World for personal gain while simultaneously pronouncing they are acting as the Outer Colonies protectors. The collateral damage of the conflict between Reds and Von Rays goes unconsidered. The Outer Colonies turn into commodities and when these commodities lose their value, they are abandoned in ruin.

The Dark Thing

One of the things that struck me most about Nova was that while the characters weren't particularly racialized, there was a pervasive dark presence throughout the novel. Lorq is essentially mixed, as we learn when his parents ancestry is described. "He knew that his mother's parents were on Earth, in a country called Senegal. His father's great-grandparents were also from Earth, from Norway" (43). Not only is he mixed in the current, racial sense, but in the futuristic sense of home planets. The other characters' race, and physical appearance in general, is barely mentioned, except in the case of Ruby, where her pale skin serves to accentuate the numerous differences between her and von Ray. The twins also have race explicitly stated, but they are still considered identical. They are mirror images of each other, from appearance to speech patterns. They are rather the representation of two parts of a whole, one with race and one lacking. While this distinction is interesting and certainly worthy of discussion, the language used is not particularly polarizing in this instance. They are described in terms of factual evidence and thus do not carry all the connotations that blackness can represent.

In contrast, every description of Sebastion's pets uses highly connotative language. For example, the initial description of the pets says, "Moist wings crinkled, stretched, like onyx, like isinglass. The man reached up to where black claws made an epaulet on his knotted shoulder and caressed the grappling pads with a spatulate thumb" (22). Later on the same page von Ray calls the creature a "devil" and the narrator describes it as a "beast". Throughout the book, every description of the animal is dark and mysterious. The reader never gets a clear sense of what it looks like other than that it is black and perhaps something like a bat (a creature of the night and with its own store of connotations). Even as it saves Lorq from Ruby in the fog (which also carries its own weight in symbolism) we don't get a clear picture of it. Again referred to as it, the narrator says, "It darted, dark and flapping, between the walls" (172). And shortly after, "The dark thing flapped about him now" (173). The only way the reader knows what is being described is the key word "dark". The creature's identity is wholly determined by its darkness rather than any other trait. This strikes me as disconcerting, that anything should be so reduced to a single trait. This is the inherent problem of literary racism, that it limits characters to a single trait and prevents them from being fully developed.

From Moons to Galaxies: Identity Politics in an Intergalactic Age

Kaitin is in love with moons, since "Moons are small. A moon's beauty is in variations of sameness" (17). He is discomforted by the thought of a larger world, of differences, of that which he doesn't understand.
Samuel Delany's Nova not only creates a broader world, but a broader galaxy. Rather than capital cities, he talks of capital planets; Australia and New York are considered in touching distance. Yet, society is still as stratified as before. The Draco Empire includes Earth and is mainly the site of large governments and corporations. This galactic region is home to the upper classes. The Pleiadades Federation is beyond Draco, the home of Lorq Von Ray, and is a distinctly more middle class community. The Outer Colonies are almost entirely geared towards Illyrion mining, and thus have a primarily lower class population. These regions are almost successive rings about each other, with the economic and social status of the population decreasing the further from the center. Draco is mostly white, while the Pleiadedes have a much more racially mixed population. The rise of mega companies, and the attendant effects on class are, in fact, a locus of the novel. Lorq plans to bring back seven tons of Illyrium to put the Illyrium mines out of business, bringing the economy out of stasis. Prince counters that he must keep the Illyrium out of circulation, since it will plunge both Draco and the Outer Colonies into economic ruin. Prince admits how how tenuous his position is: "I'm not a fool, Lorq. I'm a juggler. I want to keep all our worlds spinning about my ears" (204). Lorq's father, in a flashback, says, "The combination of cultural difference - and I don't care what your social studies teachers at Causby say - and the difference in the cost of transportation is what assures the eventual sovereignty of the Outer Colonies" (93).
Given a narrative that clearly draws parallels with the era of decolonization, particularly with regard to Africa, it's surprising that Samuel Delany is seen as unconscious of the "black experience." In fact, as he describes, he is highly conscious of the realities of his various identities: black, male, gay, science fiction writer, and so forth. His homosexuality manifests itself more heavily in later books, where the erotic and romantic tensions become more obvious, but there are hints here as well. The character of Katin can be seen as a meditation on his own role as a writer. And these realities manifest them in different ways in his books. As Jeffrey Tucker quotes him as saying, "Look, I am black. Therefore, what I do is part of the definition, the reality, the evidence of blackness. It's your job to interpret it" (13).
That interpretation is a steep task to demand. For example, Greg Tate is troubled by Delany's failure to embrace a vision of black characters in which current African American culture serves an affirming role, rather than crafting a future where, perhaps, race doesn't matter, but the cultural differences of the different communities don't exist either. As Delany retorts, with an example from James Baldwin, the concept of race is something society constructs. On the other hand, to say something is a social construct is only marginally useful; it may explain origins, but it often keeps people from recognizing what has become a very effective reality for present society. And definitions can in and of themselves be troubling, like the constant point in both articles that somehow science fiction is not a "black" genre, despite its qualities that might render it appropriate to express certain facets of black experiences - including its marginality and its potential to erase the past and envision a new world.
Even more troubling is the need to see Delany as consistently one and only one of his identities, the nearly pathological need to understand his work in a "black" context, as though only this gives him credibility, and the lack of some undefinable characteristic known as "blackness" keeps him from certain levels of acceptance. How do we move from moons to galaxies? How do we reach an understanding of the whole picture that doesn't discount any of these factors, but understands them as a unified, inseperable whole? How do we move beyond small differences and appreciate the multitude of vast variations?

Race in Nova

When I put down Samuel Delaney’s Nova, I was struck that this novel seemed different from the other science fiction novels by African American authors. After a few minutes, I realized that it was the lack of defined “black characters.” Delaney makes it clear that race exists, the central character is Mouse, a Gypsy, and the hero is Lorq Von Ray who is a Senegalese-Norwegian mulatto. In comparison to Octavia Butler’s science fiction, which over emphasizes the importance of the “black woman” and creates a society where the white society has screwed up and African people must save the world, Delaney doesn’t focus on the black man and his struggle in a dystopian society. Instead, Delaney takes the classic space opera and adds diversity. Nova is set in a world where humans have populated many universes and intergalactic travel is possible. The conflict is between two rival families, the Reds, who run a manufacturing company on Earth and the Von Rays, who run a shipping corporation in the outer galaxies over Illyrion, a mysterious element that acts as a power generator. The conflict centers between Prince Red, with the help of his sister Ruby, and Lorq. The Red’s represent the past while Lorq is the vision of change in the outer galaxies. However, the fact that Lorq is mulatto and represents change doesn’t have anything to do with the novel.
As I stated earlier, the conflict, which happens to be Black, Lorq, versus White, the Reds, is not a racial conflict. It is more like a conflict of the fledgling trying to break away and take down the mother country. Red Shift Limited represents the “old money” and the Von Ray’s are the emerging middle class. Essentially the conflict is over the idea of progress. As Lorq tells Prince when the two meet at the climax, “If I win, a third of the galaxy moves forward and two-thirds fall behind. If you win, two-thirds of the galaxy maintains its present standards and one-third falls” (Delaney 203). Lorq realizes that he is in essence the anti-hero, the good that he is fighting for will leave a path of destruction, but he has made the realization that society needs to improve.
In Dangerous and Important Differences by Jeffrey Tucker, the idea of the world without race is proposed. Tucker says that “‘race’ [is] a category notoriously deployed as a part of oppression, exploitation, extermination, of entire communities of people” (7). While Tucker later goes on to argue that race is also integral in creating groups that protect ourselves, it is still true that it is very dangerous. Differences create individuals, while identities create groups. This shows the danger in the perception of race that Tucker describes. People tend to view a group based on basic similarities, not looking for the individual. Race is the most common way that people are grouped, however, it is not a person’s only identity. We are made up different groups and are amalgams of them all. The idea of a world devoid of a racial conflict seems like an ideal paradise. Tucker makes it clear that Delaney believes that the fact that he is a black man is enough to make his literature black.
Delaney’s literature represents Tucker’s “universalism,” because the reader identifies with the characters, not on the basis of race, but because of the struggle.
Due to this idea of race, Delaney has been seen as the “antirace race man” because he creates worlds full of race, but instead of solely empowering the black man, in Nova, he creates a world where race isn’t as integral to identity. Instead the place of your home world is more important to defining a person than the color of one’s skin. This ideal “utopia” seems to occur in Nova, however, if one reads carefully, there are very subtle hints of racial tension between Prince and Lorq, all spawning from Prince. Prince makes note of the savagery that Lorq’s father brought out in his own father, Aaron Red, when the red’s visited the Von Rays when Lorq was a child. While Lorq’s father is white, this not only plays on the white supremecist attitude that African American’s are barbaric, but it also shows a prejudice toward those living in the outer colonies. Also, there are a few blatant illusions to slavery in America. On page 206, Prince refers to someone as being “tarred and feathered.” This is an obvious illusion to the tortuous practice in antebellum south. When Mouse remembers his childhood as a gypsy on earth, he remembers that there is still racism. Earth is one of the few places where it is still relevant, as if it were inherently part of our nature.
Delaney does show that there are drastic differences between the people of the outer colonies and those who live in the Draco Federation through the language used by the commoners. Delaney has Lorq use the slang when Lorq is surrounded by the members of his ship who speak in this bizarre tongue. This dialect seems to reverse the conventions of modern grammar. Lorq says “where Prince and myself among the cards fall?” (Delaney 111). This means “where do Prince and I fall among the cards?”, but it is evident that through this dialect, Delaney creates the cultural differences between the classes. Lorq is the obvious hero, however, since he seems to bridge the gaps that divide the societies.
While the “African savior” isn’t the focus of this novel, Delaney still brings in ideas of “Afrofruturism.” According to Mark Dery in Black to the Future, African Americans have always taken to edgy technology that belongs on the streets. They use the technology, but don’t necessarily create it. Mouse seems to represent this idea since he plays the cyber syrynx, a new wave music maker that provides a full sensory perspective. Mouse says that the “three pin-lenses have hologramic grids behind them, … stings control the sound, [and a] knob controls the intensity of the scent” (Delaney 103-104). This piece of machinery seems to have no greater purpose than to be used on the streets for enjoyment. Much like the Walkman, boom box, and gameboy, the instruments sole purpose is pleasure and is thus open to the lower class. This is an instrument of the street, which mimics human senses, and Mouse’s playing represents the urban technology. However, through Mouse’s playing of the syrynx, with it’s visual, audio, sensory controls, Katin, the “voice of realism” in Nova, believes that while society, without a set race and home world, is in search of a new culture, Mouse is the perfect combination of all society. Through the use of various musical and art images, Mouse makes everything inherently his. In a sense, Mouse is the future; he is the combination of all and represents the true world culture.
Interestingly, the majority of humans have cyborg plugs in them that allow them to plug into the ship. While this serves to show the presence of technology in people’s lives, it also is what Mouse says isolated the gypsies. Mouse himself didn’t have his plug implanted until he was in his teens. This seems to show that while society has moved forward, toward a greater culture and tolerance, that we are actually dependant on technology.
While this vision of the future might seem very common, Delaney’s interesting use of race allows the reader to imagine a world where “race” has been replaced with the world of one’s birthplace, and all humans are seen as one. Delaney creates a society where the black man is the savior, but not in a white society, but in an amalgam society that needs t

When prompted with the idea that his work does not culturally identify the Blacks or non-whites in his science-fiction, Delany considers his early work with this perspective (including Nova) and decides that this notion, made by Greg Tate, may be accurate. In order to justify these cultural inadequacies of his earlier science fiction, Delany explains: "some of that earlier work of my yearned to be at - was suffused with the yearning for - the center of the most traditional SF enterprise, well: I can admit that - there - something is dead on in Greg's criticism" (Dery 746). What one can deduce from this claim is that traditional and more readily accepted science fiction novels generally hold inaccurate depictions and representations of the black race and its inherent cultural characteristics. Even when writing in a genre where the presence of others in the plot is greatly relied upon, it seems that the cultural identities of races, predominately of African-Americans, are disposable and unnecessary to these fictional plot development.

Dery also proclaims that especially African-Americans should be able to identify with the readily-used concept of the other. He explains, "[...] African Americans, in a very real sense, are the descendants of alien abductees; they inhabit a sci-fi nightmare in which unseen but no less impassable force fields of intolerance frustrate their movements [...]" (Dery 736). If the African-American race has so many innate connections to the science fiction genre, why does their accurate cultural characterization seem to be a dangerous subject to touch for a beginning or unconfident novelist? Doesn't it seem that this genre should favor African-American identification over white or unspecified identification?

In Nova, when initially describing the twins Lynceos and Idas, Delany highlights the differences between their skin color to each other, rather than their skin color to the skin colors of others around them. While he describes Lynceos' flesh as "translucent as soap" and Idas' flesh as "the color of an emperor grape," there is no mention on their Africanist cultural backgrounds or their features as compared to others around them. It is later made known, with the mention of their third brother, that the family is African-American (or African), but the reader can only deduce this through immediate skin color, not specific cultural identity.

Although Delany admittedly agrees with Tate's dissatisfied opinion about his earlier work and does make the Africanist presence more well known in his later novels, the reason for his earlier downplaying of these presences is still surprising. In order to make a name for himself in the genre about the other, Delany wrote excluding much of the other from his plots. While we cannot ask why Delany followed this the traditional science fiction norm, to not properly represent African-American culture, we can ask why this misrepresentation is the traditional norm.

Obsession with the Present

Despite the fact that the events of Nova take place in the thirty second century, we see constant references back to the twentieth century especially, and the centuries prior to that. For example, Che-ong was anxious to hear “nineteenth century Turkish music” (72); at Taafite we see thirteenth century Nigerian art, and a house that is modelled after a twenty first century American mansion(188-190).

There is some justification for this within the parameters of the book itself. Regarding the obsession with twentieth century culture, for example Cyanna Morgan says that no other time period since then has humanity been transformed to such an extent, seeing as how “at the beginning of that amazing century, mankind was many societies living on one world; at its end:... an informatively unified society that lived on several worlds”.

What about the obsession with thirteenth and nineteenth century culture, and everything in between? That was explained by the lack of cultural solidarity and originality, that is supposedly caused by the mobility of the population in this imagined future. According to one university student, the thirty second century is “an age where economic, political and technological change have shattered all cultural tradition....there’s no reservoir of national, or world solidarity” (46) This theory is fleshed out further, when Katin explains near the end of the book that with the advent of plug-in jobs and cyborg technology, and the “the ease with which men and women can work now, anywhere they want, there have been such movements of peoples from world to world in the past dozen generations that society has wholly fragmented around itself” (220). Without communities staying put in one place, apparently, it is theorized that it is impossible to formulate culture, or social tradition. Culture is so rare that in the book, people can only remember one time when original thought did flourish, in Vega (102).

However, Katin argues that while there isn’t social tradition in the sense that people are familiar with, there is a new cultural tradition that he sees in Mouse, a sort of intergalactic culture (analogous to a global culture in our time), in which Mouse “collected the ornamentations a dozen societies have left...over the ages and made them inchoately [his]”.

I feel, however, outside the context of the book, the obsession of this future society is a necessity for two reasons. The first and more obvious one is that since this society is an imagined future of our current society in the twentieth century, the only viable history that the author can come up with is existing history, that is, up to the twentieth century. So for that reason, if he wishes to discuss history’s impact on this future society in an accurate way, the best way really is to draw on our own history, and our present, to avoid the inevitable contradictions that come with imagining a whole new history.

The second reason is one that I am borrowing from Fredric Jameson’s Progress Vs. Utopia. There, he says that the main goal of science fiction isn’t simply to present a possible future, but rather to help us in “apprehending the present as history” (153), by offering it to us “in the form of some future world’s remote past, as if posthumous and as though collectively remembered” (152). So in this way, Nova is a way of meditating on our present, and the obsession with present culture is a way of making us realize just how important our culture is to our identity. Like Katin says, “a novel....is always a historical projection of its own time” (128).